Plantar Fasciitis Solutions

Plantar Fasciitis Solutions

August 2014 – Last month took my first backpacking trip since before I got plantar fasciitis, 16 miles and up to 11,500 feet in Colorado’s Flat Tops Wilderness. No heel pain, no problem. What the …? How did I emerge from the gloom of limping debilitation and come to this? I believe I’ve answered that question, at THIS HERE LINK!

May 2014 – Went for a lovely hike in the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument near Santa Fe, New Mexico, free from even a worry about FOOT pain. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of walking, and even running, near my Colorado home. Until early in 2013, I’d have been sitting at home in the gloom of not being able to enjoy experiences like this.

Why am I doing plantar fasciitis pages on this Web site? Because, with plantar fasciitis crippling my right foot, I discovered that dealing with it, let alone getting it cured, is complicated. So I set out to talk with the experts and get the answers I needed. I added these PF pages to share what I’ve learned.

It’s helped me, that’s for sure. A year and a half ago, limping through life and avoiding all those things I used to do and was now unable to do, I thought it was the beginning of the end, the onset of a forced sedentary life with the inability to exercise and go places and do things. Chronologically, I’m a geezer of 64, but I’ve always seen myself as youthfully active. So it was gloomy in 2012 to see myself as starting a downward spiral into a disabled and premature old age.

In the last year I’ve walked long days on hard pavement through cities as a tourist; climbed the Brocken in the Harz Mountains, the highest point in northern Germany; and taken long hikes in the mountains of my Colorado home – and I don’t have to limp anymore.

This home page is an intro to what’s contained in the other plantar fasciitis pages of this site, with a primary focus on “self-cure” and a secondary focus on medical interventions for those who can’t self-cure. But if you have plantar fasciitis, you’re probably among the 90 % of us who, the docs say, can cure themselves. Like I did. But what does it mean, “cured?”

We worry about the knees going bad, but who would ever think that solid, solid piece of the body, the heel, would fail? Boy does it ever, when you develop that debilitating condition known as plantar fasciitis.

Plantar Fasciitis Solutions is dedicated to exploring this complex topic and navigating the maze of technologies, therapies, products and advice that presume to offer us a cure. Coverage spans both the practical cost-effective solutions and the state of the art. Just check out the menu soup at the top of this page, and if it’s missing anything you want or need to know, shoot me a note in the comments section at the bottom.

So now you have heel pain, even crippling heel pain that makes you wonder if your walking days are over and this is the beginning of the end.

You may know for a fact that you have plantar fasciitis. Or you may suspect that you have plantar fasciitis, either by way of the Web or the opinions of other people. I have it; that’s what got me started on this mission of discovery. I scatter my opinions or experience through these plantar fasciitis pages, but sparingly. Because the best advice is to at least start with the opinions of experts, and those can include options from an MD to podiatrist to a physical therapist.

Plantar fasciitis is the most common of all foot afflictions, affecting some “2 million Americans per year and 10 % of the population over their lifetimes” according to the American Physical Therapy Association. Worldwide, that extrapolates to 45 million worldwide per year and 700 million during their lifetimes. And 90% of those who have it can cure it on their own. It’s not a quick self-cure. It takes patience and perseverance. But why get injections and surgery if you can do it yourself?

By “self-cure,” the experts mean all the things you can do yourself without having to get specialized medical intervention including such as injections and surgery.

A common estimate is that self-cure can be achieved within a year, but the projected timelines vary:

According to a news release by theAmericanAcademyof Orthopaedic Surgeons, “approximately 90 percent of plantar fasciitis patients get better with exercises or non-operative techniques over a nine-month span.”

“With self-cure treatments, the condition usually clears up within 24 months,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

Another source says 80 percent will get better within 10 months.

Yes, it takes patience and perseverance.AND, and it has to be done right if it’s going to work.

Doing it right can be a tricky proposition without expert guidance, and that’s what Plantar Fasciitis Solutions is all about. I talk to the experts. When I use “the editorial we” in dispensing observations or advice, that means the expert guidance is coming not from me but from the people who really know what they are talking about.

As a health/medical science writer of more than two decades experience (Google my name, and smatterings of work both health/medical/science and general-interest will pop up), I specialize in finding and working with national and world-class authorities – in this case, authorities on plantar fasciitis – to find, summarize and detail their guidance.

Otherwise, the search for information and guidance can result in a crazy hodgepodge of often conflicting and dubious input from friends and family and the Internet, and even sometimes from medical practitioners. Some advice is out of date and superseded by knowledge gained from new studies. Some is unclear or incomplete about what to do and how to do it. Some is just plain sham. And if that’s not enough, the sheer mass of products being peddled on the Web is confusing enough to send even the most thoughtful person on a spree of spending in directions that may be useless, or reachable in other ways at much lower prices.

The long timeline for self-cure “..causes frustration for everybody,” says one orthopedic surgeon. “Most people want a quick cure, and unfortunately a lot of people selling this or that will capitalize on it.”

Self-curing is the first line of activity against plantar fasciitis before considering more serious medical intervention, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it all by yourself. You can use the information from Plantar Fasciitis Solutions and Web sites linked from here as a springboard. Physical therapists can also help you optimize your results.

I invite readers to share their experiences and opinions. I also invite you to ask questions and suggest new sub-topics of this issue that afflicts so many, and I will do the necessary research and provide new answers.

Recent Posts

Last month took my first backpacking trip since before I got plantar fasciitis, 16 miles and up to 11,500 feet in Colorado’s Flat Tops Wilderness. No heel pain, no problem. What the …? How did I emerge from the gloom of limping debilitation and come to this? More on that question on the home page of my plantar fasciitis Web site at: